This article was produced in collaboration with Canyon and was published in issue 138 of Rouleur
“We’re a small, big team. Does that make sense?” Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig asks me. The Danish rider is spinning her legs on a turbo trainer outside the Canyon//SRAM zondacrypto team bus after the fourth stage of the 2025 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. She is shaded from the blazing sun that is shining over the entirety of France’s Nouvelle-Aquitaine region by a brightly coloured, sponsor-correct canopy casting a dark shadow on the melting tarmac.
On this Tuesday afternoon, the Tour is in Poitiers, a city on the river Clain known popularly as the ‘city of a hundred bell towers’. A few kilometres away from where the team buses stand in their puzzle of vibrant blocks, the central plaza of Poitiers is quaint and picturesque. Its narrow streets are rich with preserved historical architecture and half-timbered houses. Religious edifices, commonly from the Romanesque period, draw tourists to the historical centre of the Poitou region. But right now we are at the Tour de France, and in typical bike racing-style, I am speaking to Uttrup Ludwig in a run-down car park that is decorated only with fading graffiti. None of this matters to the 29-year-old or her team-mates, though, because they are here for one reason only: to try to defend the yellow jersey that Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney won in 2024.
If Uttrup Ludwig had used the same phrase, a “small, big team,” to describe Canyon//SRAM four hours earlier when the day’s proceedings were just beginning in the town of Saumur, I wouldn’t have known what she meant. But during my day inside the team car for stage four’s flat 130.7-kilometre trip through western France, I have come to understand exactly what she is trying to say. I had been a guest in ‘car zero’ – the recon car that is sent ahead of the race in order to look at the route just before the peloton and send back any warnings for danger points on the course that might not have been spotted when the riders did their own recon of the roads a few months before. With me was Dan Fleeman, Canyon//SRAM zondacrypto’s Performance Director, and Sports Director Steffen Radochla. The fact that the German outfit has this additional car is the first thing that helps the ‘big’ part of Uttrup Ludwig’s statement make sense. This is a team leaving no stone unturned in their drive for success – and they have the resources and budget to do so.
“We drive ahead of the race route, generally around five or 10 kilometres ahead of the race and we report directly back to the DS in race car one,” Fleeman had explained to me a few hours earlier as I sat in the plush leather seats in the back of the Canyon//SRAM zondacrypto car.
“What’s especially important is towards the finish,” added Radochla. “It always looks different when you have the barriers up and they guide the road differently, so they need information about that. Sometimes you can only go left in a roundabout which makes it very tight, for example.”
“The first year we had a specific recon car like this, I’m pretty sure we were the only team doing it. Now there are more teams, like yesterday, I think we saw a car from Lidl-Trek stopping and checking the weather,” said Fleeman. “Steffen comes from men’s cycling – he was working with Bora before – and every team does it in the men’s side but I think it’s just growing in women’s cycling now.”
Having this car, according to Canyon// SRAM, is just one of the many things that they need to do to stay ahead of the curve. Fleeman explained that defending Tour champion Niewiadoma-Phinney had spent months at altitude trying to be in her best possible shape for this race. The level and requirements to stay at the top table of women’s cycling, he believes, are going up every single year with more training volume required for the best of the best. Teams like Canyon//SRAM zondacrypto must stay attentive when it comes to developments if they want to remain at the forefront, both in preparation for and during the races.
“The level has stepped up,” agreed Fleeman. “Just to tread water and be competitive, you need to be doing a lot. Kasia is one of the most professional riders. You never need to tell her to train, because she is so focused. On the women’s side, the tendency was always to do a lot of intensity, because the races are shorter and intense. Now obviously the races are getting longer as well, so the volume of the training has had to increase. We make sure we’re checking everything during the race: training files, power numbers… the doctors are checking things like hydration and general health, plus we use things like Core body temperature sensors to keep on top of it. Equipment and bikes are so important too.”
There is a new level of expectation on the German team this year, both staff members admit. The 2024 edition of the Tour de France Femmes threw Canyon//SRAM into the spotlight when Niewiadoma-Phinney took her historic victory by just four seconds in that nail-biting finish at L’Alpe d’Huez on the final stage – to come back to this race and top that performance is a tall order. It is key that the pressure which comes with being defending champions is managed healthily though, as Niewiadoma-Phinney herself had told me at the beginning of the stage in Saumur.
“Pressure is something I don’t really feel any more, because as a young rider I would allow myself to crack under pressure, and once I hit the rock bottom, I became immune to this,” she said. “I feel very privileged that I won this race already and it would make me proud and satisfied to add another yellow jersey, but it’s not that my life will end if we don’t do it. I see both options. I’m super determined to win again, but I feel like it gives me just extra motivation versus negativity.”
Like Fleeman, Niewiadoma-Phinney also reflected on what she and her team had done to be ready for this bike race, which sits at the very pinnacle of her sport: “To be honest, the preparation for the Tour started at the beginning of May. From that moment, it was all one big focus on the race. I spent only four days at home and was mostly away racing or at the training camps in the mountains,” she said.
“The final camp was in Andorra. We were just with a small group of people and it was all about training hard, getting back, having good food and then recovering. It was like a ‘monk’ lifestyle. In some ways, once you have three weeks with the one big goal you want to achieve, it kind of feels pleasurable. Even though you go to bed at 9:30pm when it’s still bright outside and it kind of feels like something is off with your life, you also enjoy it.”
It is in the last part of Niewiadoma-Phinney’s answer that the ‘small’ element of Uttrup Ludwig’s statement begins to fit into the Canyon//SRAM story. While this is a ‘big’ team, doing all the things that a ‘big’ team is expected to do in this high-performance new age of women’s cycling – like having an extra team car and staff to go ahead of every Tour de France stage – there is also something tight-knit and familial in their identity. Above all, enjoyment is always at the centre.
For example, as Fleeman and Radochla drove studiously through the French countryside, passing through charming villages decorated with yellow flags, tufa stone châteaux and Gothic churches which are characteristic of the Loire Valley, they were doing their jobs, but there was more to it than this. What was clear is that these were two men who were taking things so seriously both because they were invested in Canyon//SRAM zondacrypto’s mission and because they have a genuine passion for what they are trying to achieve.
Radochla had a small Buddha which he put on the dashboard of the car, a superstitious good luck charm which he hoped would bring success to the riders he is working with. Friendly banter flew between the German sports director and Fleeman as they talked about finding a spot to stop for some coffee and regaled tales of the stage before, when they had started chatting to supporters of the team and ended up being offered sausages off a barbecue. They pointed out fans with Canyon//SRAM signs and gave them a toot of the horn, they threw bottles at those who had made the most effort when it came to their elaborately decorated cardboard. This was all while they were watching the road for any danger or any risk – however subtle – that could send the team’s Tour de France dream awry.
As we reached the final 20 kilometres of the stage, Radochla spotted a roundabout with barriers that had made the turn especially tight for a peloton of a hundred bike riders. He wound the window down to ask the local gendarme if this was just for the road block, or if the barriers would remain in place for the riders due to come 15 minutes later. The answer came that the road furniture would stay where it was, so the duo driving the car passed the information back to the sports directors in the race. When the peloton came through the roundabout after us, there was a crash towards the back of the bunch – but not one single Canyon//SRAM rider was involved.
Eventually, the chaotic sprint on stage four was won by SD Worx-Protime’s Lorena Wiebes, with Canyon//SRAM’s highest-placed finisher Chloé Dygert getting her best result of the race in fifth place. Importantly, every rider had made it through safely – despite a number of incidents and close calls impacting others – including 2024 yellow jersey winner Niewiadoma-Phinney, who was waiting patiently for the big mountains to come later in the race.
As I speak to Uttrup Ludwig at the end of the stage, my body stiff from hours sat in a slow-moving team car that had analysed every metre of pavement on the way to Poitiers, she begins to expand on her description of Canyon//SRAM’s ‘big, small’ personality.
“It’s a real family team with heart,” she smiles. “So many staff members have been here forever and you know when a lot of people have been here for more than 10 years then it is a nice environment and a place you want to be.”
Behind the Danish rider, Dygert hugs Fleeman and thanks him for his help in helping her achieve a top-five finish in the biggest bike race in the world. There is laughter between the riders as Niewiadoma-Phinney chomps on a handful of Haribo sweets in the goal of aiding her recovery for the days to come.
“We truly like spending time together,” says the Polish rider, smiling. “I have been at teams where I would wait at the dinner table for it to be over so I could go home, but here I feel like I actually want to be coming to bike races. We all come from so many different places in the world, but we all accept each other for not only the cool things, but also for negative things. Whenever there is something I recognise with myself, like if I act in a weird way or way that people don’t necessarily understand, I don’t feel like I’m excluded. We try to always work around it. The bad and the good things are just accepted and worked around, that’s great.”
Soraya Paladin, Niewiadoma-Phinney’s team-mate and key domestique for the Tour de France Femmes, shares a similar sentiment: “We are unique because of the cohesion that we have between each other,” says the Italian rider. “We always have fun and we always stay together in the bad times and good times. We never give up, we always try to find something that we can improve. This is the most important race of the season and we put so much effort into this, so much time away from home and hard training, but we do it to be as ready as possible for each other. If you work hard, it is even better when you achieve a result.”
On Sunday, when five stages had passed since my day embedded with Canyon//SRAM zondacrypto, Niewiadoma-Phinney stood on the podium of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift in third place overall. The Polish rider has been in the top three of the Tour every single year since its inception, a sign of her consistency and versatility as a bike rider. Importantly, each one of those results has been achieved with the support of the German team behind her, made up of a group of individuals with a steadfast commitment to their common goal. Increased budgets, altitude training, meticulous attention to detail and dedication is a big part of what it takes to make success happen in bike racing. This is the ‘big’.
Canyon//SRAM is proof, however, that the ‘small’ matters just as much. Friendship, passion, belief, acceptance and enjoyment might not be shown on Strava, or TrainingPeaks, or in power files, but this is a team that knows their value. For Canyon//SRAM, without the small going along with the big, the magic doesn’t happen.
